A lawn in-ground sprinkler system typically includes a matrix of buried water pipes, a number of fittings connecting the water pipes, and a sprinkler head. Pressurized water causes a pop-up nozzle to be elevated above ground level for effective disposal of water on a lawn.
The underground lawn sprinkler heads that are recessed into a lawn in residential areas, in large public parks, in sports fields and in golf courses are exposed to physical stresses by lawn mowers, pedestrians and utility vehicles, which result in the sprinkler heads being tilted, compressed down and damaged. Sprinkler head installers have used two methods to partially solve these problems: they install a swing elbow joint or a flexible tube between the sprinkler head inlet and the water supply pipe. These methods minimize damage to the sprinkler heads that are tilted or compressed down if driven over or stepped on, but the sprinkler head repositioning of the sprinkler heads has to be preceded by digging. Even though you use a swing joint the sprinkler head still compresses down and/or tilts if driven over or stepped on. Often, excessive compression results in breakage of the swing joint and/or lateral pipe.
Often, servicing or replacing only a pop-up spray riser requires removing dirt surrounding the sprinkler head followed by grasping cylindrical housing with a hand or with a wrench to separate a cap by turning from a cylindrical housing.
Conventional donut-shaped protectors are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,120 to Sbicca, U.S. Pat. No. 4,146,181 to Soos, U.S. Pat. No. 5,211,338 to Leite, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,931,385 to Miller, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,209,803 to Colo'n. These protectors tend to be easily dislodged from the ground because they lack withholding means when they are subject to a lateral or vertical impact.
Other cylindrical shaped protectors lack the load bearing capacity, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,121 to Ferguson et al., which describes a sprinkler housing that easily compresses downward due to compression from the top while the sprinkler head and fitting become vulnerable to the load, resulting in high stress. The cap-sleeve shoulders, like the conventional donut-shaped protectors, are located just above the topsoil that is unstable and has a less load bearing capability than that of the underground soil. Both the prior art cylindrical and donut-shaped protectors are especially vulnerable against physical stresses.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,262 to Violette describes a sprinkler head guard that carries the physical stresses from service vehicles. Since the sprinkler head guard covers a large footing area from top to bottom, facilitating use of this guard results in large areas of grass that need to be removed for the sprinklers.
All prior arts have demonstrated that sprinkler heads are simply rested on sprinkler supports. They do not provide any securing means to hold the sprinkler heads with respect to the sprinkler supports, and there is no provision of cushioning means for the sprinkler heads that are subject to physical stresses.